ABSTRACT
This poem is nominally a parody of Chauncy Hare Townshend’s ‘Jerusalem’, a work which, in its author’s words, ‘obtained the Chancellor’s Medal at the Cambridge Commencement July, 1817’. 1 It was published in pamphlet form in 1817 as ‘Jerusalem: A Poem’ and is also included in Townshend’s Poems (1821). Townshend (1798–1868), poet, connoisseur and clergyman, was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating BA in 1821. As an undergraduate, he had received advice and encouragement from Southey and the Poems are dedicated to the Poet Laureate. The collection opens with ‘Jerusalem’ and ends with ‘Waterloo’, another attempt to extract bounty from the Chancellor (though a footnote adds, somewhat forlornly, that the prize went ‘to another composition’). 2 ‘Waterloo’ demonstrates the avidity which which Townshend surely read Southey’s laureate poems: And who is he amid the Gallic host, With that fierce gesture of insulting boast? Who, as to seize the prey in fancy won, Clench’d his rais’d hand? It is Napoleon. Ha! dost thou hold them in thy savage grasp? That eager hand on empty air may clasp! 3
